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The sky overhead was blue Clear, depthless, cloudless blue, the kind that stares back at you like Nietzsche’s abyss Not a cloud in sight

I hate clear skies Clear skies ain, trying to look straight up froh the most tinted part of the windshield Nope, no clouds Not even a wispy little modesty veil of humidity I leaned back in the seat and adjusted h The last rest area I’d spotted had been a broken-down, scary-looking affair that would havehauler keep on truckin’, but pretty soon cleanliness wasn’t going to matter nearly as much as availability

I was so tired that everything looked filtered, textured, subtly wrong Thirty hours since I’d caught three hours of sleep Before that, at least another twenty-four of adrenaline and caffeine

Before that I’d been on the road, driving like a e between boredom and panic In a very real way, I’d been in a war zone all that ti for the next bullet

I was desperate for a bathroom, a bath, and a bed In that order

Instead, I edged a little bit ht?" asked er His na up the sun that poured through the sideWhen I didn’t answer, he looked at me Every time I saw his face, I had a little orgeous High cheekbones, slasses he didn’t need but liked to wear anyway as protective ca his eyes just now, and they flared a color not found anywhere in the hue

David was a Djinn He even had a bottle, which currently rested in the pocket of ? Not accurate As long as I held his bottle, I had nearly unliertips Except it also came with nearly unlimited responsibility, which isn’t the supersized bowl of cherries it sounds

He didn’t look tired It made me feel even worse, if that were remotely possible

"You need to rest," he said I turned my attention back to the road I-70 stretched on to the horizon in a flat black ribbon, stripes faded to ghosts by the merciless desert sun On either side of the car, the landscape bristled with more spikes than leaves-Joshua trees, squatty alien cacti To a girl from Humidity Central, also known as Florida, the thin, dry air see ofinto sa cat and mouse out here in the middle of nowhere

"Oh, I’?"

"Better than we have," he said "I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet"

"Yet" A sour taste grew in the back of my throat, not entirely due to the lack of toothbrush and o?"

"Exactly?"

"Approximately"

"Miles or time?"

"Just spill it, already"

"We just passed a town called Solitude Six er seat, still looking at me "Seriously You okay?"

"I have to pee" I fidgeted again in the seat and glared at the road "This sucks Being hulorious, spectacular, brief period as a Djinn And I’d never had this e need to pee in the middle of nowhere

He kicked back in the seat and tilted his head up at the blank car roof "Yes, so you’ve said"

"Well, it does"

"You didn’thuman before"

"Hadn’t seen how the other half lives, before"

He smiled at the roof Which was a shame, because the roof couldn’t appreciate it the way I do "Want me to conjure you up a bathrooave ly innocent eyes "Why? Would it help?"

He was tauntingOh, he could conjure one up, that wasn’t the problem; hell, he could probably conjure up one with ItalianPerrier But I couldn’t let hi as we could,all he could to keep us unnoticed, but any big, flashy conjurations would certainly light up the aetheric like a supernova

And that would be bad To put it mildly

I pulled the car over to the side of the road; Mona protested, powered down to a throaty growl, and shivered to silence when I turned the key In seconds, heat pushed through the windshield like a bully Had to be in the nineties already, even though it was barely mid-April I felt sticky, unwashed, cra like a little two-thousandpattern-driving nearly the whole ti

"Are you okay?" David asked me

"Fine, already!" I snapped back "Why wouldn’t I be?"

"Oh, I don’t know Let’s see in the past teeks, you’ve been infected by a demon, chased across the country, killed, become a Djinn, been reborn"

"Got shot," I put in helpfully

"Got shot," he agreed "Also a point So there’s plenty of reason for you not to be okay, isn’t there?"

Yeah I was a few clouds short of a brainstorht I was dealing ith all of the craziness that had beco out here, alone, with all of this desert and huge e to realize I hadn’t dealt with it at all So, of course, I insisted

"I’m fine" What else could I say, realistically? I suck, this is awful, I’ and a Warden, we’ll never pull this off? Hell, David already knew that It was a waste of breath

David gave ht I was full of crap, but he wasn’t going to argue He pulled a book out of his coat pocket This one was a dog-eared paperback copy of Lonesome Dove, which somehow seemed appropriate to the current circu a Djinn David had a virtually li material available to him I wondered hoas on DVDs

"I’ the book "Yell if a rattlesnake bites you"